Stress basics (8)
- Stress assessment
- Stress symptoms: Effects on your body, feelings and behavior
- Stress: Win control over the stress in your life
- see all in Stress basics
Stress relief (19)
- Social support: Tap this tool to reduce stress
- Stress relief from laughter? Yes, no joke
- Spirituality and stress relief: Make the connection
- see all in Stress relief
Relaxation techniques (7)
- Relaxation techniques: Learn ways to reduce your stress
- Meditation: Take a stress-reduction break wherever you are
- Exercise: Rev up your routine to reduce stress
- see all in Relaxation techniques
Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Tips for coping with stress
Coping with stress is easier when you identify your stress triggers, manage your time well, and take steps to curb job burnout.
By Mayo Clinic staffIn small doses, stress is a good thing. It can energize and motivate you and perhaps even prevent or delay certain types of damage to your cells. But prolonged or excessive stress — the kind that overwhelms your ability to cope — can take a severe psychological and physical toll. High stress levels have been linked to depression, anxiety, cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal problems, an impaired immune system and cancer.
The following tips may help reduce your stress.
Identify your stress triggers
Your genes, personality and life experiences all influence the way you respond to stress. Situations and events that are distressing for most people might not bother you in the least. Or, you may be particularly sensitive to even minor stressors. The first step in dealing with stress is identifying your particular stress triggers.
Some causes of stress are obvious — job loss, a divorce, the death of a loved one. But small, daily hassles and demands such as a long commute or trouble finding childcare also contribute to your stress level. Over time, small, persistent stressors can wreak more havoc than sudden, devastating events do.
Try one or more of these techniques to help identify the factors causing you stress:
- Keep a stress journal. For one week, note which events and situations cause a negative physical, mental or emotional response. Record the day and time. Give a brief description of the situation. Where were you? Who was involved? What seemed to cause the stress? Also, describe your reaction. What were your physical symptoms? How did you feel? What did you say or do? Finally, on a scale of 1 (not very intense) to 5 (very intense), rate the intensity of your stress.
- Make a list of all the demands on your time and energy for one week. Some examples may include your job, volunteer work, driving kids to after-school activities or caring for an elderly parent. Then, on a scale of 1 (not very intense) to 5 (very intense), rate the intensity of stress that each demand causes.
Sit down and look at your stress recordings. Pay particular attention to events that you ranked as very stressful. Select one of them to work on using problem-solving techniques. That means identifying and exploring the problem, looking for ways to resolve it, and selecting and implementing a solution.
Suppose, for instance, that you're behind at work because you leave early to pick up your son from school. You might check with other parents to see if your son can ride with them. Or, you might come in early, work through your lunch hour or take work home to catch up. The best way to cope with stress is to try to find a way to change the circumstances that are causing it.
Next page(1 of 2)
